Nature, Natural History, and the Dilemma of Religious Liberalism in Thoreau’s The Maine Woods
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v6i1.37Keywords:
Nature, science, religion, Thoreau, Native AmericansAbstract
Focusing on Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Indian’ studies, in particular his widely popular The Maine Woods (1864), and writing from within the discipline of religious studies and speci?cally American religious history, I locate Thoreau squarely in nineteenth-century religious liberalism. This allows for a more historicized reading of his thinking on nature. Interplay between religion and natural history in Thoreau’s writing unfolded with respect to competing views of nature in nineteenth-century America. In his studies of Maine’s Penobscot Indians Thoreau attempted to wed the natural and supernatural realms. Many nineteenth-century religious liberals engaged in a similar project as they wrestled with their dilemma of whether to salvage or jettison religion as a whole. Instead of signaling a decline in creativity, imagination, or power, Thoreau’s substantial research and writing on Native Americans near the end of his life are an indication of important personal and cultural con?icts over the meaning of nature.References
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———. 1945. Old John Neptune and Other Maine Indian Shamans (Portland, ME: Southworth-Anthoensen Press).
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Miller, Perry. 1978 [1950]. The Transcendentalists: An Anthology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
———. 1993 [1956]. Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Murray, D.M. 1975. ‘Thoreau’s Indians and his Developing Art of Characterization’, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 21.4: 222-29.
Packer, Barbara L. 2007. The Transcendentalists (Athens: University of Georgia Press).
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Thoreau, Henry D. 1906. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Walden Edition (ed. Bradford Torrey and Frances H. Allen; 20 vols.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
———. 1985. Henry David Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Walden, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod (New York: Library Classics of the Unites States).
Versluis, Arthur. 1993. American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (New York: Oxford University Press).
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Albanese, Catherine L. 1988. The Spirituality of the American Transcendentalists (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press).
———. 1990. Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Baker, Jennifer J. 2007. ‘Natural Science and the Romanticisms’, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 53.4: 387-412.
Baym, Nina. 1965. ‘Thoreau’s View of Science’, Journal of the History of Ideas 26: 221-34. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2708229.
Cornell, George. 1992. ‘Native Americans and Environmental Thought: Thoreau and the Transcendentalists’, Akwe:kon Journal 9.3: 4-13.
Eckstorm, Fannie (Hardy). 1904. The Penobscot Man (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
———. 1945. Old John Neptune and Other Maine Indian Shamans (Portland, ME: Southworth-Anthoensen Press).
Emerson, Ralph W. 1963. The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Vol. 3, 1826–1832 (ed. William H. Gilman; Boston: Harvard University Press).
Fleck, Richard F. 1974. The Indians of Thoreau: Selections from the Indian Notebooks (Albuquerque, NM: Hummingbird Press).
Gatta, John. 2004. Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Gilmore, Michael T. 1985. American Romanticism and the Marketplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Gura, Philip. 1977. ‘Thoreau’s Maine Woods Indians: More Representative Men’, American Literature 49.3: 366-84. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2924988.
Hall, David D. 1989. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York: Knopf).
Holmes, Richard. 2008. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London: Harper Press).
Keiser, Albert. 1933. The Indian in American Literature (New York: Oxford University Press).
Lepore, Jill. 1998. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Knopf).
Lynch, Tom. 1997. ‘The “Domestic Air” of Wilderness: Henry Thoreau and Joe Polis in the Maine Woods’, Weber Studies: The Contemporary West 14.3: 38-48.
Marx, Leo. 1964. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea in America (New York: Oxford University Press).
Matthiessen, Francis O. 1941. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (London: Oxford University Press).
Miller, Perry. 1978 [1950]. The Transcendentalists: An Anthology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
———. 1993 [1956]. Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Murray, D.M. 1975. ‘Thoreau’s Indians and his Developing Art of Characterization’, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 21.4: 222-29.
Packer, Barbara L. 2007. The Transcendentalists (Athens: University of Georgia Press).
Parker, Theodore. 1908. Sermons of Religion (ed. Samuel A. Eliot; Boston: American Unitarian Association).
Pearce, Roy H. 1988 [1953]. Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and American Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Porterfield, Amanda. 2000. ‘Black Elk’s Significance in American Culture’, in Clyde Holler (ed.), The Black Elk Reader (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press): 39-58.
Richardson, Robert D. 1992. ‘Thoreau and Science’, in Robert J. Scholnick (ed.), American Literature and Science (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky): 110-27.
Rossi, William. 1994. ‘Thoreau and Native Americans’, The American Nature Writing Newsletter 6.2: 11-12.
Sanborn, Franklin B. 1917. The Life of Henry David Thoreau: Including Many Essays Hitherto Unpublished and Some Account of his Family and Friends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
Sayre, Robert F. 1977. Thoreau and the American Indians (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Schmidt, Leigh E. 2005. Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality (San Francisco: HarperCollins).
Silver, Peter. 2007. Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: Norton).
Slotkin, Richard. 1973. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press).
Speck, Frank G. 1940. Penobscot Man: The Life History of a Forest Tribe in Maine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).
Taves, Ann. 1999. Fits, Trances, & Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Thoreau, Henry D. 1906. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Walden Edition (ed. Bradford Torrey and Frances H. Allen; 20 vols.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
———. 1985. Henry David Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Walden, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod (New York: Library Classics of the Unites States).
Versluis, Arthur. 1993. American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (New York: Oxford University Press).
White, Christopher G. 2009. Unsettled Minds: Psychology and the American Search for Spiritual Assurance, 1830–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Published
2012-04-11
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Dillard, D. C. (2012). Nature, Natural History, and the Dilemma of Religious Liberalism in Thoreau’s The Maine Woods. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 6(1), 37-55. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v6i1.37
